SOME MORE EPIC ANALOGIES IN WORDSWORTH’S THE PRELUDE

Reprinted from Journal of Arts and History Volume XI

Published by The College of Liberal Arts, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China

June, 1981 SOME MORE EPIC ANALOGIES IN WORDSWORTH’S THE PRELUDE

An originally unnamed work later published posthumously, Wordsworth’s The Prelude has been a subject of much controversy for not only its genetic complexity (What a complicated textual history it has!) but also its generic mystery (What kind of work is it after all?). It is doubtless a poem, a long poem. But is that all? It can be a “regular versified autobiography” (De Quincey 548) or “subjective autobiography” (Bateson 165), as it talks so much about the poet himself. It is, of course, “a verse- epistle to Coleridge” (Hartman 1971, 257). And we cannot deny that it “achieves philosophical poetry”, as in it the poet really “grapples with philosophical problems” (Gallie 164). Then what else? A combination of the Bildungsroman and the Kunstlerroman (Abrams 586)? A psychological (Hartleian) treatise? A doctrine of education or politics? An extended lyric? A “prophetic Lay more than historic”?1 The fact is, it is all of these and none of these. It is a literary chameleon that always changes its appearance. If one wants to be free from mistakes, one had better call it, to borrow the poet’s phrase, “a thing unprecedented in literary history”2 or, as Herbert Lindenberger points out, “a composite of several genres” (13).

With this understanding, I would not maintain that the work should be labeled an epic, although it is my intention to discuss in this paper how it is like a poem of that genre. But before the discussion begins, we may note in passing that although to write an epic had been Wordsworth’s ambition, he did not consider The Prelude an epic at the time he finished this masterpiece of his; he thought humbly, instead, that he was not yet equal to an epic task. This is clear in the two statements he made in his two letters of 1805 to Sir George Beaumont:

It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced [me] to do this, but real humility: I began the work because I was unprepared to treat any more arduous subject, and diffident of my own powers.3 This work may be considered as a sort f portico to the Recluse, part of the same building, which I hope to be able erelong to begin with, in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it to conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative Poem of the Epic kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over.4

Despite the fact that Wordsworth did not consider The Prelude an epic, his readers have been finding epic analogies in the work. Superficially, a poem of 8,584 lines5 does have “epic length” (Hartman 1971, 208); the opening address to the breeze is really like an epic invocation; examples of epic simile and digression can also be found indeed. And one can even argue that the narrative begins in medias res. (Hartman 1962, 607). But such superficial and local similarities are not the most important facts to establish the work as an epic. Then, one may point out that it has “ high seriousness, sustained exercise of the will, and even amplitude and breadth” (Lindenberger 13) in its theme (or tone), hero and setting. But the use of such abstract terms without the support of more concrete justifications will seem too impressionistic and subjective to be convincing. Again, one may discover in the poem’s structure a Beatrice-Dante-Virgil relationship (Hartman 1962, 613) or an Odyssean journey for home (Abrams 592); in the poem’s language (or style) so many traces of Miltonic rhetoric.6 But conclusions of comparative nature as such are not drawn without the danger of arbitrariness and oversimplification.

It seems, therefore, that the epic analogies already explored in the poem are as valid and vain as so many other studies of the poem. And one wonders whether one can discover more striking resemblance for the “ape” to bear to “man.” I dare not claim I can do the miraculous job. However, I believe I can eke out the analogy- hunting interest by looking again from ape to man, and this time with equal attention to the local and the overall features of the body, with due analytical zest (to the chagrin of the poet), and with some imagination (to the great joy of the same person).

As we all know, an epic like Iliad or Paradise Lost often involves two sides in plain conflict for the sake of something: the confederated Greeks against the men of Troy and their allies for the sake of Helen (or, honor), or God and good angels against Satan and his subordinate devils for the sake of man’s soul. Now in The Prelude we see a similar conflict between nature and society for the sake of the poet’s soul, that is, imagination. This conflict does not take the form of an open war as does that of Iliad, nor does it introduce an active inducement (of Satan to Eve) like that of Paradise Lost. It is only a poet’s inner conflict resulting from the soul’s travel between two mutually opposing worlds, much like the conflict existing in Faust’s mind as it travels in the realms of God’s creation and Mephistopheles’ conjury. Wordsworth’s nature, referring to such external things of beauty as hill and vale, stream and lake, forest and sky, flower and bird, and other things living with or in them, is God’s primary creation and is said to be conducive to the growth of the poet’s mind. On the other hand, Wordsworth’s society as exemplified in The Prelude, referring to such man-made places or institutes as city and town, school and church, and such human activities as party and fair, government and revolution, is a “Parliament of Monsters” (VII 692) and “blank confusion” (VII 696), something fearfully destructive to the poet’s soul. Accordingly, it is only natural that we feel a certain tension in the poet’s account of his life with man in nature and society. The tension may not rise to the pitch of an epic war or inducement affecting the entire civilization or moral future of mankind. It, nonetheless, lends itself easily to epic treatment.7

Much depends on the idea of imagination. If imagination is not just a particular romantic poet’s soul but “the faculty which is the primum mobile in [all] Poetry”,8 then a narrative of the genesis, growth, impairment and restoration of a poet’s imagination under the opposing influences of nature and society should be more than a personal history. If “we are hard put to think of The Prelude… as a spokesman for its age” (Lindenberger 13), we can justifiably think of it as a spokesman for poets of all ages. So, let’s examine whether or not imagination is Wordsworth’s soul only.

For Wordsworth, love is the originator of poetic imagination. In The Prelude, II 238 ff., he explains how an infant babe “gathers passion from his mother’s eye,” and how as his senses are quickened and his mind possesses a synthetic power, “the first/ Poetic spirit of our human life” comes into the child. For Wordsworth, love is also an indispensable element of poetic imagination. In Book XIII, he says:

Imagination having been our theme, So also hath that intellectual love, For they are each in each, and cannot stand Dividually. (178-81)

Of course, Wordsworth has, directly or indirectly, said much more about imagination in all his works: for instance, its relation to fancy, to memory, to intuition, to sense and mind, to the moods of joy, pain, fear and solitude, or to mystic, animistic or pantheistic experiences. But whatever else he has said or implied, it remains true that as he takes love for the originator and indispensable element of poetic imagination, the history of his poetic imagination is a history of love; and as he regards imagination as his creative soul, by equation love is his creative soul, too. Now isn’t love the soul of all other great poets too (if one prefers not to use the mystic term “imagination”)?

The question cannot be easily answered because it will involve the hard job of investigating the great poets’ lives first. But it is interesting to note that almost all the great epic writers we can think of are interested in love of one form or another: love for a beauty or honor in Iliad, love for home in Odyssey, love for national glory in Aeneid, love for divine virtue in Divine Comedy and love for God in Paradise Lost. Now when we come to Wordsworth’s The Prelude, we find it shows the poet’s interest in love for nature and man. And the story in it is a story of how this kind of love (sometimes “nicknamed” imagination or creative mind or undersoul or other fancy terms) grows or is stunted in the interaction of nature and society. This is as interesting a story as that of any epic mentioned above, if we can review it step by step as follows:

In Books I and II of The Prelude, the poet tells mainly about his childhood and schooltime (roughly from five to seventeen years old) at Hawkshead. The incidents related include: playing with the Derwent as a playmate, snaring woodcocks and stealing others’ prey, plundering birds’ nests, rowing a stolen boat, skating in games, fishing and kite-flying, pursuing home amusements, boat race, riding a horse to Farness Abbey, outing to the White Lion, morning walks with a friend, etc. In these incidents, the poet, no matter whether he was single or in others’ company, was strongly exposed to the influence of nature. At first, he might only hold “unconscious intercourse/With the eternal Beauty” (I 589-90). Yet, he confessed he was fostered “alike by beauty and by fear” (I 306) which nature provided. At first, he might only indulge in “those fits of vulgar joy” (I 609); the beauteous forms of nature might only be “collaterally attached” (II 52) to his sports. Yet, he finally came to seek nature “for her own sake” (II 208). He summed up this period by saying:

… I still retain’d My first creative sensibility, That by the regular action of the world My soul was unsubdu’d…. (II 378-81)

This manifestly tells that society then did not seriously, if ever, damage the imagination that nature had fostered in him. In fact, by feeding his “lofty speculations” (II 462) and giving him a “neverfailing principle of joy,/ And purest passion” (II 465-66), nature had built, as it were, a formidable barricade for his imagination so that in “mingling with the world” he could live always “remov’d/ From little enmities and low desires” (II 446-47)--the products of society.

In Book III, the setting is moved to the poet’s earlier university days at Cambridge. There the “battle” for the poet’s soul between nature and society became apparent. At first, the poet’s sight was “dazzled by the novel show” of university environments and activities: society, as it were, dealt its first mighty blow. But soon his mind “returned/Into its former self” (III 96-7) and became “busier in itself than heretofore” (III 104). He “more directly recognized [his] powers and habits” (III 106). Through contact with man and nature in that recognition, he seemed to have reached “an eminence” (III 169) of his creative power. However, as his heart “Was social, and lov’d idleness and joy” (III 236), he then “slipp’d into the weekday works of youth” (III 244)--society won him over by its attraction. It was a time when his “Imagination slept” (III 260), when the “deeper passions… were by me/Unshared” (III 532-36), when “Hush’d…/Was the undersoul, lock’d up in such a calm,/ That not a leaf of the great nature stirred” (III 539-41). Society had temporarily triumphed over nature in the poet’s heart.

Book IV brings the poet back to his native vale for summer vacation. There he resumes constant contact with nature and feels “a human-heartedness about my love/ For objects hitherto the gladsome air/ Of my own private being, and no more” (IV 225-27). He begins to observe his villagers as well as his old Dame and his dog with interest. When he first made another circuit of their little lake, he found “restoration came” (IV 146). He also found “A freshness ... /In human Life” (IV 181-2). Nevertheless, the newly restored imagination soon gave way to society again: … a swarm Of heady thoughts jostling each other, gawds, And feast, and dance, and public revelry, And sports and games… these did now Seduce me from the firm habitual quest Of feeding pleasures, from that eager zeal, Those yearnings which had every day been mine, … (IV 272-80)

Although he might know “That vague heartless chace/Of trivial pleasures was a poor exchange/For books and Nature at that early age” (IV 304-06), it was not until that magnificent morning when he came late from a party and became, under the influence of the natural beauty then, “A dedicated Spirit” (IV 344) that he could be said to have restored his imagination again. However, after his dedication, he experienced in himself “Conformity as just as that of old/To the end and written spirit of God’s works,/Whether held forth in Nature or in Man” (IV 357-9). His love for nature and man had led him to rescue the Discharged Soldier in distress.9 Thus, we are told in Book VI that his return to the University witnessed in him a change for the better:

… now the bonds Of indolent and vague society Relaxing in their hold, I lived henceforth More to myself, read more, reflected more, Felt more, and settled daily into habits More promising. (VI 20-25)

And he felt “The Poet’s soul was with me at that time” (VI 55). His imagination led him to see an ash tree in human terms and to find a guide in living nature (v. VI 119). His intensified love for nature made him rove among distant nooks in summer (v. VI 208) and carried him to the Alps. He stated two motivations for going to the Alps: to see the mighty forms of nature and to witness the result of the French Revolution (v. VI 346-54). But as his description shows, this trip owed its impressiveness more to the natural powers than to social activities. It was when he and his friend were left alone to cross the Alps that he realized the great power of imagination. Hence his conclusion for this trip:

A Stripling, scarcely of the household then Of social life, I look’d upon these things As from a distance, heard, and saw, and felt, Was touch’d, but with no intimate concern. (VI 693-6)

Society had not gathered enough forces to drag him from nature.

In Book VII, the poet describes himself as a vagrant dweller among the “unfenced regions of society” (VII 63). In London now he fully experienced the life of a metropolis. His response to it had three stages:

No otherwise had I at first been mov’d With such a swell of feeling, follow’d soon By a blank sense of greatness pass’d away And afterwards continued to be mov’d In presence of that Metropolis… (VIII 742-6)

The three stages constitute a similar pattern of mind as occurred in his Cambridge period. At first, society dazzled him by its novel show, then he knew he was trifling (v. VIII 707), and then he returned to himself. The only significant difference is: at Cambridge he had chances to go directly back to great nature for the restoration of his poetic mind; in London he only depended on his memory of the past for preventing himself from falling into the trap of “that vast receptacle” (VII 735):

Attention comes, And comprehensiveness and memory, From early converse with the works of God Among all regions; chiefly where appear Most obviously simplicity and power. (VII 717-21)

The great strength of nature was here testified. The immediate society with its “parliament of monster” failed to repulse the remote influence of nature on him. His imagination remained--he was able to see “the parts/As parts, but with a feeling of the whole” (VII 712-3)--because “The Spirit of Nature was upon me here” (VII 736).

If during the London period society still could not gain ground, it at least made the poet love his fellow beings more (v. VIII 860 ff.) and made him prepared ironically for his mental breakdown in the later France period. In France he was at first attracted to the novelties of the country (v. IX 82-5), and then spent a short time of loitering life in society (v. IX 114-22), much like his first experience at Cambridge or in London. But, after that, instead of being claimed back by nature, he “gradually withdrew/Into a noisier world” and soon became “a Patriot,” his heart all given “to the people” (IX 123-6). He got acquainted with some military officers, among whom was the meeker and more benign Beaupuy, whose revolutionary zeal threw him into complete sympathy. When he came back to England, a number of events pushed him to his mental crisis--in England, the baffled contention against the traffickers in Negro blood (v. X 204-6) and Britain’s declaration of war against the new Republic of France (v. X 229 ff.); in France, Robespierre’s reign of terror (v. X 110-1 & 329) and the Frenchmen’s changing a war of self-defense for one of conquest (v. X 792-3). In each case he tried to reason himself into accepting the status quo. However, as his analytical reasoning failed to answer satisfactorily his perplexed mind or simply proved false, he finally lost all feeling of conviction and “yielded up moral questions in despair” (X 900). So, society at last won a victory over nature by first involving the poet in the most passionate form of mass behavior, namely revolution, and then confusing him with the maze of intellectual reasoning. If nature had taught him to love mankind intuitively before, he had forgotten it by then.10 For the restoration of his poetic power, he had to go back again to nature.

So far we have clearly seen that the conflict between nature and society in The Prelude is developed as a result of the poet’s travel between these two realms. Nature, as a positive power, has been dragging the poet to the bright side of man, teaching him to love mankind unquestioningly so that he can willingly do the holy service of writing poetry, and giving him a vision of one life in all, a synthetic power which is the power of imagination. On the other hand, society, as a negative power, has been pulling the poet to the dark side of man, calling upon him to indulge in trivial pleasures so that he will abandon his poetic ambition, or setting him to grope fruitlessly in the blind alley of analytical science, which is harmful to poetic imagination. So, as far as the plot of conflict is concerned, nature and society in The Prelude are really like the two opposing forces often found in an epic. Now from this we can push the matter even further and find more epic analogies in the poem.

We know there are usually supernatural forces--gods, angels and demons-- intervening in the action of an epic. Now we find that in The Prelude men seem to take the role of supernatural forces. On one side, we have poets, wanderers, hermits, shepherds, all those who love nature or live in nature; they are like good angels sent by nature to call or take the poet to its side. On the other side, we have lawyers, preachers, politicians, revolutionists, all those who love society or live in society; they are like bad angels sent by society to counteract the effects of nature. The division of men into these two kinds is obvious from the favorable and unfavorable terms used to describe them respectively. And the clearest examples of their intervention in the action are the comings of Dorothy, Mary, Coleridge and the poet’s other friends to accompany the poet in nature or take him back to nature whenever he is in danger of losing his soul as at certain times in his Cambridge, London and France periods. Meanwhile, we may think of not only Robespierre and the Royalist officers but also Beaupuy as particular figures sent by society to tempt the poet’s soul and damage his imagination, directly or indirectly.

If in The Prelude men are the equivalent of supernatural forces in an epic, then books are the equivalent of epic figures’ arms or weapons. In Book V the poet makes it clear that books are also of two kinds: books of poetry, fairy tales, romances, etc. (products of passion and imagination, Works of Bard, or the Semi-Quixote’s shell) in contrast with books of mathematics, philosophy, logic, politics, etc. (products of reason and knowledge, Works of Sage, or the Semi-Quixote’s stone). Both kinds of books are “ever to be hallowed” because they are both “only less…/ Than Nature’s self” (V 220-2). However, in The Prelude the former is always a strengthening power for the poet’s imagination while the latter except books of geometry is a weakening power. In Book V, the poet tells how fairy tales and romances helped him to have “no vulgar fear” (V 474) of dead men’s ghastly faces, how he was fond of reading the Arabian Tales, how such imaginative works are friends of “yoke-fellows” (V 544), and how reading poetry provided his young heart with pleasure from “images, and sentiments, and words” (V 603). In Book VI, he tells how he also gathered pleasure from geometry by meditating “Upon the alliance of those simple, pure/Proportions and relations with the frame/ And laws of Nature” (V 144-6). And we know the poet seldom cared to read books of different nature, but when “wild theories were afloat” (X 774), he must have been more or less influenced by them. It makes no difference whether he ever read Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice or not. What counts is, ideas from books extolling pure reason for human affairs must have helped to undermine his poetic soul.

… even so did I unsoul As readily by syllogistic words Some charm of Logic, ever within reach, Those mysteries of passion… (XI 81-4)11

Therefore, we can say books of analytical nature and logical reasoning were like the weapon society used to battle against nature whose arms to protect the poet’s soul seemed to be books of imaginative (synthetic) nature and passionate feeling.

So far I have pointed out some more epic analogies in The Prelude in view of its theme, plot, characters, etc. They may not strike the reader as obviously plausible, as they require the reader to imagine nature and society as two combatant bodies, men as supernatural forces, and books as arms or weapons. However, if they are far-fetched, they are never absurd, for we can deduce from them a work quite like another version of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained combined.

In Paradise Lost, God created the first man and woman to live happily in the Garden. But Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan. Notwithstanding that God had sent angels to keep the couple in obedience to Him, Eve’s intellectual pride lent to Satan’s temptation, and her false reasoning (“Good unknown, sure is not had, or had/ And yet unknown, is as not had at all”12) plus the visual deception of the serpent brought about man’s fall and the knowledge of evil while Adam agreed to fall with Eve out of love for her. The disobedient pair was led out of the Garden in despair. Now the first ten books of The Prelude tell much the same thing, only in an obscure manner and in different terms. In substitution for God and Adam and Eve, we now have nature and the poet only. Nature “created” the poet’s soul and gave him an Eden (his Vale), too. The poet is equal to Adam and Eve in combination. or Adam and eve are in effect two mutually complementary elements of mankind, not just man and woman but “the two natures,/The one that feels, the other that observes” (XIII 323-4) or simply feeling (heart) and sense (eye). Now society, like Satan, came to tempt the poet. Nature sent angels (Dorothy, Mary, Robert Jones, etc.) to guard him, too. But since he could not “welcome what was given, and craved no more” (XI 207), the serpent (the French Revolution) came with its visual deception. He took the outward facts for truth--“the eye was master of the heart” (XI 173)--and plunged into false reasoning (Godwinian rationalism) much like Eve. And the result was: his loving heart (Adam) fell with his reasoning head (Eve) into knowledge of evil and his paradise was lost. Coleridge and Dorothy (Milton’s Michael and Raphael) came to lead him out of the befouled Garden (society). He was launched in despair until the paradise was regained.

The last three books of The Prelude are in some sense the equivalent of Milton’s Paradise Regained.13 In Paradise Regained, we have Jesus, the all-knowing savior of mankind, resisting all Satan’s temptations by adhering to His Father’s admonitions. In the last three books of The Prelude, we have the enlightened poet getting rid of society (the embodiment of temptations) by thinking back over the past lessons given him by nature (his spiritual father). It is noteworthy that when the poet speaks of “spots of time” as a “vivifying Virtue” to nourish and invisibly repair our minds (v. XI 258 ff.), the examples given are his seeing a woman in wind-vexed garments surrounded by visionary dreariness, and his waiting impatiently with his brothers for two horses to bear them home on a stormy day up a lonely crag. By these two incidents, nature seems to suggest to the poet two messages: a “missioner” (one with pitcher on head)14 is sure to suffer from adversities; one should wait patiently for God’s arrangement. These two messages are what Jesus uses to carry out his mission of regaining man’s lot paradise; they are also what Wordsworth needs to carry out his mission of creating great poetry.15 If this interpretation should sound too personal to be convincing, suffice it that Wordsworth’s memory, which is celebrated throughout his work for its restoring and elevating power, is almost always connected with nature, and as such it is virtually like God’s word if Wordsworth’s nature can be equated with God in certain context. So, if for Wordsworth memory is a virtue which “enables us to mount/When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen” (XI 267-8), it is like Christ’s memory of God’s word. Of course, it was not memory alone that helped to restore the poet’s impaired imagination. His sister’s “sweet influence” (XIII 209) and Coleridge’s “gentle Spirit” (XIII 245) had the same effect, and so had his direct contact with nature again, e.g., his going to the top of Snowdon to see the sun rise. All these elements, among others, naturally find no explicit parallels in Paradise Regained. However, it may be worth thinking too that whereas in the end of The Prelude a friend accompanied the poet to a mountain top to find later in a “blue chasm” “the Soul, the Imagination of the whole” (XIII 55 ff.), in the end of Paradise Regained, Satan took Jesus to the highest pinnacle of a glorious temple to be transferred later by angels to a “green bank” for refreshing and repairing his body. Is Wordsworth here making an unintentional parody?

As the last example shows, the similarities between Wordsworth’s work and others’ are often so subtle and obscure that one wonders if he ever had a mind to imitate others.16 Nevertheless, whether intentional or not, so long as the similarities can be felt, they may add interest to our reading. I dare not claim that The Prelude is an epic of the usual kind or that it is a complete imitation of Milton’s epics. But I believe that to view the work as an epic and to explore some more epic analogies in it can at least bring into focus an interesting, if not very valuable, facet of it.

In his On Wordsworth’s Prelude, Herbert Lindenberger quotes III 171-83 and says that Wordsworth “claims to find heroic argument in man’s personal history” (12). It is all very true. But it is not only the “heroic argument” that makes an epic. To equate The Prelude to an epic requires consideration of many other things. And I hope that so far this paper has significantly touched upon some of the many other things and can, by arguing and “imagining” for the epic stature of the work, set the poet’s soul at rest since he had so much wanted to write an epic before his life was over.

Notes

1. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Lines to William Wordsworth,” rpt. in Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams & Stephen Gill, ed. The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850, A Norton Critical Edition (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1979), p. 542. The critical edition is hereinafter referred to as Norton. 2. See Wordsworth’s Letter of 1 May 1805 to Sir George Beaumont, rpt. in part in Norton, p. 534. 3. Letter of 1 May, rpt. in part in Norton, p. 534. 4. Letter of 3 June, rpt. in Norton, p. 534. 5. According to Ernest De Selincourt’s edition of. Wordsworth: The Prelude, Text of 1805 (Oxford UP, 1970). All book and page numbers in this paper refer to this text. 6. Lindenberger, among others, refers to this in his book, p. 10. 7. In his Introduction to the 1805 text, Ernest De Selincourt says: “Wordsworth was in evident agreement with Milton on the true nature of the epic subject. Both of them repudiated military exploits, ‘hitherto the only argument heroic deemed,’ in the desire to bring within its confines a more spiritual conflict. Only the pedant will dissent from their conception; and those who regard the mind of Wordsworth as both great in itself and essentially representative of the highest, the imaginative type of mind, will recognize its adventures as a fit theme for epic treatment.” 8. See Wordsworth’s letter to Henry Reed of 27 Sept. 1845. Quoted in Raymond Dexter Havens, The Mind of a Poet (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1941), p. 206. 9. The statement is valid in that the poet met and saved the soldier when he was taking a walk “along the public way,” as was his “favorite pleasure.” 10. In XI 199-257, the poet told how he was then unlike Mary Hutchinson (the “maid”), who could love whatever she saw unquestioningly. 11. Cf. also XI 123-8. 12. Paradise Lost, Bk. IX 756-7. 13. Cf. Hartman’s remark: “… The Excursion continues Paradise Regained in the same way as the Prelude dovetails Paradise Lost.” 14. I think the woman can stand for a missioner because she must have been carrying out the mission of fetching water with the pitcher from the pool or something like that. 15. Notice that the idea of writing poetry as a holy mission is stated in the beginning of The Prelude. See I 60-3. 16. But, of course, Wordsworth is certainly influenced by Milton.

Works Consulted

Abrams, M. H. “The Design of The Prelude: Wordsworth’s Long Journey Home.” Rpt. in Jonathan Wordsworth et al., 585-98. Bateson, F. W. Wordsworth: A Re-Interpretation. London: Longman Group Ltd., 1971. De Quincey, Thomas, “William Wordsworth.” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (VI, 1839). Rpt. in part in Jonathan Wordsworth et al., 545-7. De Selincourt, Ernest, ed. Wordsworth: The Prelude. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970. Gallie, W. B. “Is The Prelude a Philosophical Poem?” Rpt. in Jonathan Wordsworth et al., 663-78. Hartman, Geoffrey H. Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787-1814. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 1971. ------. “A Poet’s Progress: Wordsworth and the Via Naturaliter Negativa.” Modern Philology, LIX (1962). Rpt. in Jonathan Wordsworth et al., 598-613. Havens, Raymond Dexter. The Mind of a Poet. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1941. Lindenberger, Herbert. On Wordsworth’s Prelude. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1963. Wordsworth, Jonathan, et al, eds. The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: Norton & Co., 1979.